How "realistic" is Kantian "empirical realism"? Mainly by way of commentary on passages from the Analytic of Principles and Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Abela offers, first, the "priority-of-judgment" view: "Kant...banish[es] the idea of any epistemic intermediary between belief and the world" (35); "there is nothing outside judgment...that informs, constrains, or ultimately grounds objectively valid judgment" (139-40). The ultimate ground is simply the totality of one's judgments. Second, representation of empirical reality presupposes a grasp of realistic truth-conditions, i.e., conditions construable neither pragmatically nor as mere assertion-conditions (230-49).
On several occasions Abela weakens the first claim, speaking rather only of Kant's rejection of a determinate "given" or a determinate "subjective foundation" for judgment (e.g., 60, 99, 151). But that must be an understatement. One might think to connect it with Abela's reading of the......
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